以专利数据计量汽车零部件供应商的知识创造

Using patent data measure components suppliers' knowledge creation in the auto manufacturing industry

在汽车生产行业中,计量供应商的知识创造很重要。本文继承了以专利数据计量知识创造的方法,比较了三个计量指标:"专利数量"、"专利被引率"和"被引加权专利数量"。结果表明,"专利数量"和"被引加权专利数量"能很好地计量供应商的知识创造水平,且没有大的区别,这与前人在汽车生产商中得到的结论一致,说明汽车生产供应链上下游企业可以采用统一的计量方法表示知识创造,为该环境下的知识管理研究打下坚实的基础。

In the auto manufacturing industry, the upstream components suppliers＇ knowledge creation not only is important for themselves, but also impacts the downstream manufacturers. Therefore, measure methods to the suppliers＇ knowledge creation are pivotal to research in this context. This paper succeeds to traditional measurement that use patent data as proxy, and applies this method to components suppliers of the autos. Three indicators based on patent data have been constructed： patent count （PATENTS） , relative citation ratio （RCR） , and citation- weighted patents （CWP）. Our results show that Patents and RCR are both reasonable indicators to measure supplies＇ knowledge creation. This finding echoes other researchers who found the similar conclusion within auto makers. Therefore, in auto manufacturing industry, both auto makers and suppliers can use uniform method to measure knowledge creation activities, which lays steady foundation for research on knowledge management within the auto manufacturing supply chain.